


Hard Light

by AnonEhouse



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cap-Ironman Bingo, Established Relationship, Gen, Humor, M/M, No Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 17:46:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5834929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonEhouse/pseuds/AnonEhouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony invents a hard light shield, but Steve just wants to take him out for coffee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hard Light

(If you are reading this on any PAY site this is a STOLEN WORK, the author has NOT Given Permission for it to be here. If you're paying to read it, you're being cheated too because you can read it on Archiveofourown for FREE.)

 

"It's light weight!" Tony grinned as if he'd said something clever.

Steve pretended not to get the pun. "Yes, Tony, you've said, it's a hard light shield. It's a very pretty toy."

"Toy." Tony waved his arm, and the glowing image of a shield moved with it. "This, this is amazing! This is the wave of the future. I'm miles ahead of the Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms! They've only just managed to coax photons into binding together to form molecules." Tony raised his eyebrows and waited for Steve's response.

"It's still just something to look at," Steve commented, without letting on that he was secretly really impressed. He loved to see how worked up Tony would get, trying to explain things to him. As a bonus, quite often while explaining, Tony would clarify things in his own mind and come up with solutions to problems. Not that this was a problem. Steve's vibranium shield might not be cutting edge technology any longer but he was used to it, and could make it do anything he needed. The learning curve with some of Tony's fancy stuff was often accompanied by surprises-- not really something you wanted in the field.

"It.. It is more than that! Photons are massless particles that don't interact! Everyone knows that!"

Steve nodded. Tony had entered the manic inventing stage some time back, which is why Steve had stepped in for an intervention. No one else quite had the nerve, because Tony liked to demonstrate things which had a tendency to 'go boom', but Steve trusted his reflexes.

"But this turns conventional wisdom on its ear!"

"Uh huh. Wanna go out for coffee? There's a new place I've been meaning to try, but I wanted your expert opinion on it." Steve kept his glee silent as Tony flushed a rather appealing shade of reddish purple in his frustration.

Tony's mouth opened and shut a few times. He said quietly, "I pumped rubidium atoms into a vacuum chamber, and then I cooled the atom cloud to just a few degrees above absolute zero. Then I used the weakest possible laser pulses to fire single photons into the cloud. All that, just to get the beginning, with two photons merging into a single molecule."

"They have Mexican mocha and hazelnut Frangelico affogato," Steve commented.

Tony looked sadly at the light shield. "Sure. Let's go for coffee." He stroked his hand over the top of the shield. "Don't feel sad, Aura. _I_ appreciate you."

"Aura. You've named it?"

"Like you don't whisper to your shield. I've heard you."

"Just thinking about tactics out loud," Steve said airily. He put his arm around Tony's shoulders. "I'm not giving up my shield for Aura."

"I'm not asking you to betray Bertrand, just give Aura a try."

"Bertrand?"

Tony's eyes narrowed. "You talk in your sleep. I assumed you were talking about your shield. I looked it up, 'Bertrand' means bright shield rim."

Steve coughed. "Yes. Yes of course. Bertrand is my shield." Bertrand was a long time ago, and while Tony knew better, he liked to pretend Steve had come to his bed a virgin. "Come on, coffee." Steve steered Tony towards the door. "Aura is very nice."

"I bet you'd have noticed if I made light sabers," Tony said. "OH! Now, that's an idea!" 

"Coffee," Steve said firmly, but deep inside, he was, just a little, jumping up and down with glee at the thought. Light sabers were extremely cool.

**Author's Note:**

> A fill for a photo prompt showing Tony holding a shield made of light on my Bingo card.


End file.
